FLIGHT OF THE ZEONIAS. 625 



first specimen I found was a straggler in a different part of the 

 forest. On July the 21st, after a month of unusually dry and 

 hot weather, in ascending a slope in the forest by a broad path- 

 way mounting from a moist hollow, choked up with monstrous 

 arums and other marsh plants, I was delighted to see another of 

 what had always been so exceedingly rare a group of butterflies ; 

 it crossed the path in a series of rapid jerks, and settled on a 

 leaf close before me. Before I had secured it T saw another, and 

 then shortly after a third. I mounted to the summit of the 

 slope, followed a branch pathway which led along the brow of 

 the ridge, without seeiug any more, but returned again to ex- 

 amine well the exact spot where I had captured the three, for 

 it very often happens that a species is confined to a few square 

 yards of space in the vast forest, which to our perceptions offers 

 no difference throughout its millions of acres to account for the 

 preference. I entered the thicket from the pathway, and a few 

 yards therein found a small sunny opening, where many of the 

 Zeonia were flitting about from one leaf to another, meeting one 

 another, gambolling, and fighting ; their blue transpai-ent tinge, 

 brilliant crimson patch, and long tails, all very visible in the 

 momentary intervals between the jerks in their flight. I was 

 very busy, you may imagine, at first in securing a supply of 

 specimens ; I caught perhaps 150, two-thirds of which fell to 

 pieces in the bottom of the net, so fragile is their texture. I 

 then paused to look around the locality, and endeavoured to 

 find the larvae and pnpre. 



" I walked through the thicket in all directions, and found 

 the space peopled by the species was not more than from twenty 

 to thirty square yards in extent : so far as the eye could reach, the 

 leaves were peopled with them ; it is possible the brood be- 

 longed to some one tree. The only two pupes I could find, it is 

 true, were on two distinct kinds of trees, but this is no proof 

 that the larvas may not have fed on one tree only. I was dis- 

 appointed at not finding the larvae, althougli I searched well 

 during this and the three following days. On the second dav 

 the butterflies were still coming out; on the third they were 

 much fewer, and nearly all worn ; and on the fourth day 1 did 

 not see a single perfect specimen, and not a dozen altogether. 

 During all the time I worked in the neighbourhood of the city 

 of Para I found but one specimen of a Zeonia. This was in 

 1848. The next time I saw the genus was at Altar do Chao, 

 s s 



